


Why Us?

by diamondlatte



Series: Again and Again [1]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Airplane Crashes, Alternate Universe - Beach, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternative Universe - Kingdom, Angst, Arguing, Arranged Marriage, Blood and Injury, Canon Compliant, Car Accidents, Childhood Friends, Childhood Sweethearts, Denial of Feelings, Divorce, Drinking, Drunkenness, Falling In Love, Feuding Families, First Kiss, Hallucinations, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Mental Health Issues, No happy endings, Toxic Relationships, Wakes & Funerals, bodyguard! yifan, denial of death by imagining they are still around, emperor! junmyeon, fanboy! junmyeon, i KNOW i tagged major character death but just know that they have many lives together, prince! junmyeon, sick! junmyeon, songwriter! yifan, war general! yifan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-06-28 17:17:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19816885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diamondlatte/pseuds/diamondlatte
Summary: They didn’t meet in their last lifetime. They didn’t get to be together this lifetime. They don’t know about their next lifetime.But they’ll try, in the next lifetime and the ones after that, because like stars that will burst and light that follows night, like leaves that bloom again after the bitterness of winter, like rain that falls after a long spell of dry, they are meant to be, and time doesn’t quite matter in the grand course of everything.(or, yifan and junmyeon have a thousand lifetimes to get it right, to be together.)





	Why Us?

**Author's Note:**

> for the love of everyone PLEASE listen to infinite's [Why Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6F3TTgPCNg/) as you read this fic!! it's as heart breaking as i tried to make this fic and i may have cried a few times writing this 
> 
> please take note that in this installment, both yifan and junmyeon die multiple times, so please read the tags carefully! there is also no happy ending in this part, but i am writing an accompaniment to this fic that is purely happy so if you wish to see their happy ending i hope you'll wait just a little while for the sequel, which is the next part to the 'again and again' series! 
> 
> tags: major character death, blood and injury, implied/referenced suicide, arguing, toxic relationships, divorce, airplane crashes, car accidents, sick character, implied/referenced homophobia, internalised homophobia, drunk character, mental health issues, hallucinations, feuding families, funerals (please tell me if you want anything added to this list!)
> 
> i hope this is enjoyable, as always <3

_I would love you in every lifetime_

_Even if it meant pain and suffering_

* * *

They are meant to be. That is a fact, something that is sure as the dawn of the sun in the east and the set of it in the west, as sure as the stars that come to life with a bang and fade away with a burst, as sure as the slow ticking of time that counts down each lifetime with a carelessness that only time itself can afford. They are soulmates, the two of them, atoms drawn towards each other along with everything that they are.

But just because they are meant to be doesn’t mean it’s easy. 

They never meet in the first lifetime they have together. Junmyeon is a prince from his homeland, Yifan a war general from another country, and they are two opposing tides that wish to flood a desert, and they never even hear of each other’s names. Perhaps it never matters much anyways, because Junmyeon is taken in the dead of the night (dead, dead, dead) and never seen again, mourned for and cried for; Yifan is slayed on the field, his death polished into a hero and the battle cries are made in his name. 

Fate doesn’t give up that easily, and they are given another chance, _have_ to have another chance. 

The second time, they are no more than strangers, barely acquaintances, names a passing breeze that are easily forgotten to each other. They bump into each other, this time in the streets of Seoul that is not quite Seoul yet, and the newspapers Yifan carries drops onto the street and flies into the wind, grey ribbons twisting in the blue sky. 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Junmyeon says, apologising. “I’ll get you a new one, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Yifan says, waving a hand. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“I’m Junmyeon,” Junmyeon says after he gets a new copy of the papers from a nearby vendor. 

“My name’s Yifan,” The other says, and then they part, just like that. 

Not this lifetime then, for Junmyeon forgets he ever had known Yifan, and Yifan in turns doesn’t remember him at all, and to each other they are no more than a face in the crowd that had been particularly vivid in a moment of clarity. 

Then, another lifetime, and maybe it will be this time, because it’s the third time. Again, in the past; Junmyeon, the crown prince, and Yifan, his bodyguard. This is the first time that Junmyeon falls in love with Yifan - how can he not? Yifan is always there, always around him, teasing and making jokes to make him feel at ease, and when they are together he can forget about the risk of assassination and his pending ascension to the throne. 

“You are my happiness,” Junmyeon tells Yifan, when it is just the two of them and all the other guards have been dismissed. The cherry blossoms smell sweet around them, but Yifan’s smile is that much sweeter, and Junmyeon doesn’t need to thumping of his heart to tell him that he’s fallen in love.

He had been happy, in that lifetime. They couldn’t be together, their time was limited, but he knew that Yifan had loved him back in as much ferocity as he did, and that was all he asked for. 

A permanent happiness was not meant for this lifetime. Everything crashes down in Junmyeon’s life within a night, right when he least expects it.

His mother, the Empress, is assassinated, and Yifan is heavily injured when protecting him against the invading assassins. He fights off every single assassin that dares even look at Junmyeon, who does his best and stabs at those that come close enough for him to raise his dagger. Then, it takes only a split second - Yifan’s guard down, worried about Junmyeon, and then there’s a flurry of dark blue towards Junmyeon and before he can say anything, Yifan puts himself in the sword’s path and slices the assassin’s head off.

Junmyeon thinks he screams for help but he isn’t sure, just stares at the red staining Yifan’s robes and tries to help Yifan. The healers are not arriving and the other guards are rounding up the intruders, but it is clear with how much blood has been lost that Yifan cannot be saved.

“You must live,” Yifan tells him, when he is the one with a sword to his stomach and is bleeding onto the cream floor of Junmyeon’s bedroom. 

“No - no - Yifan - _no_ -” 

“You must _live_ ,” Yifan repeats insistently, but his breaths are becoming short, and he reaches up to cup Junmyeon’s cheek, who leans into his touch, even though his hands are covered in blood. “You must live, for our kingdom, my prince.” 

“How can I -” Junmyeon cuts in, sobs bubbling up in his throat as he watches his love die in his arms, in front of his eyes, “- how can I when you are no longer with me?”

“And I will always love you,” Yifan says, promises, like he knows they have a thousand chances to get it right, “so you must live, my prince.” 

“Yifan,” Junmyeon says, voice breaking, and then he presses himself close to Yifan’s warmth one last time before he’s holding the ghost of a man who had dedicated his life to protect him and above all, _love him_ , and no matter how much he screams and cries and whispers _i love you_ , Yifan does not wake up. 

The guards find him holding Yifan’s lifeless body, covered in blood and crying his heart out. They don’t talk about what they had seen after that. They pretend not to remember Junmyeon refusing to let go of Yifan, they pretend not to remember Junmyeon asking for Yifan’s dagger to be left with him, they pretend not to notice the same dagger holstered at Junmyeon’s thigh when he ascends the throne a few days later.

They don’t, because they know the crown prince had been in love with the head guard, and it is not their place to speak of the relationship they had. They don’t, not when Junmyeon refuses to take or marry, not an empress, or an emperor, or a prince or a princess or a noble. 

They will never, because even to this day, the bedroom that the crown prince had once slept in is locked and barred, and their emperor only enters it twice a year. Once, on the passed head guard’s birthday and the other on the day of his death. No one else had been allowed in, and there are rumours of what is inside the room, though the guards that have been beside Junmyeon since the beginning never tell. 

It isn’t until Junmyeon is old, and the kingdom is thriving, and the throne has to be passed on that he asks for the room to be unlocked and bids for them to come in. 

The room is bare but well kept, just a bed and a set of drawers, nothing to suggest that decades ago their head guard had died in here. 

“The bottom drawer, if you will,” Junmyeon requests, still polite and gracious after all these years, even when approaching his deathbed, and one of them does so, pulling out the same dagger Junmyeon had taken from Yifan all that time ago. 

“Your imperial majesty?” One of them inquires as Junmyeon handles the dagger, looking at it. 

“I have been told I will die soon,” Junmyeon says, voice calm and steady like how he has led the kingdom to where it is, “and I wish to remain here till it happens. The ascension has been decided upon, you will know what to do.” 

Junmyeon’s death is peaceful and quick to come, a reprieve after the tumultuous beginning of his rule; the kingdom feels it to its roots, and even the neighbouring kingdoms grieve and send their respects. No one is there to watch Junmyeon die bar from the handful of guards that had been there from the start, and perhaps it is a trick of the light, for the curtains are open to let the evening sunshine in, but the moment Junmyeon closes his eyes, they see the outline of a tall figure bending over Junmyeon, moving a hand over his cheek and clasping his hand that was holding the dagger to his chest. 

Then their emperor is no more, and that lifetime comes to an end. 

Even when that comes to an end, they do not. The next time that they meet, they are children in a time closer to ours. 

Maybe this lifetime, fate hums, watching the two children start to play together. Perhaps, indeed, for Junmyeon and Yifan grow up together, best friends so tightly knit together that time cannot come between them. Perhaps this time, for Junmyeon falls in love with Yifan when he is fifteen and Yifan has always loved him anyway. Perhaps this time, for this the first time where they have a probable future together and maybe, _maybe_ , this is the lifetime of happiness they will have together.

Alas, they are still not meant for happiness. Junmyeon is born frail and sick, in and out of the hospital often, and they are eighteen when Yifan proposes to him when he is in the hospital, oxygen mask on and fingers cold in Yifan’s hand. 

“Marry me,” Yifan whispers, “so we can be together just this once. Junmyeon, will you marry me?” 

“I have always said yes,” Junmyeon replies, voice weak, so weak, but he squeezes Yifan’s hand as best as he can. 

They wait for Junmyeon to get better, and he does, is well enough to be out of the hospital, and the wedding is fast, faster than they could have imagined. The only people that are there are their families and their close friends, and no one brings up how young they are to be getting married, because they know that Junmyeon’s time is limited. 

They have two weeks together as a married couple before Junmyeon’s health starts deteriorating. He goes back into the hospital, IV drip in his arm and eyes staring blearily up at the monitor. They hadn’t thought that it was unusual, just that he was sick again, like how he periodically always was. Maybe if they had known better, they would have been more scared, but they are young and reckless and in love. 

Junmyeon never exits the hospital again. 

For four months, Yifan holds onto Junmyeon’s hand by his hospital bed, recounting their favourite memories together - going to the beach, kissing under the night sky, playing with cats at the cat cafe, getting married, smearing cake on each other’s faces, birthdays, anniversaries - as he sits beside Junmyeon and has to watch the love of his life die and waste away in front of his eyes.

“I love you,” Junmyeon whispers to Yifan, voice so small that Yifan can’t bear to listen to him. “I really do, Yifan. I’m so sorry…” 

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Yifan says fiercely, gripping Junmyeon’s hand twice as hard to make up. “I love you too, Myeon.” 

Junmyeon passes a week later, lips cold and hands colder, surrounded by his family and Yifan. His funeral has already been arranged, and everyone is set to attend it, bar for Yifan. 

“He died of grief,” They say, whisper, as Yifan’s coffin lies next to Junmyeon, the both of them to be buried together. “Not even a week later, and his family was devastated.” Then they don’t whisper anymore, because Yifan and Junmyeon wouldn’t have wanted anyone to be sad over them, and they are no longer here.

The soil covers the coffins up, and the clock rewinds as time moves on, this time to another lifetime. 

Now, one more time, they meet on the streets, except this time they are students and Junmyeon isn’t looking and crashes into Yifan. His books are scattered everywhere and his file bursts open and his papers are spilling out and god, really, did this have to happen to him _today_ , but then the tall stranger bends down and picks him up and then picks his books up and then it’s Junmyeon’s heart that starts picking up. 

“Sorry for knocking into you,” The stranger says, an awkward but strangely endearing smile tugging at the corners of his lips, “I’m Yifan.”

“Thanks for helping me,” Junmyeon says, a little flustered and clutching the books to his chest haphazardly, “I’m Junmyeon.”

Yifan smiles again this time, gentle and warm, and reaches for the books in Junmyeon’s arms. “Let me help you carry these. It’s the least I can do for completely knocking you over.” 

Junmyeon gets to know that Yifan is a year older than him, is studying law and can speak Mandarin; he gets to know that Yifan is actually warm-hearted, loud and an absolute idiot underneath his cold exterior; he gets to know what Yifan’s hands on his hips feels like and what his lips on his neck feels like and what his body feels like against his.

He gets to know what it’s like to fall in love with Yifan. 

“Maybe I fell in love with you a lifetime ago,” Yifan teases when they lie on their bed together, five years later and engaged. 

“I’d fall in love with you if I met you every lifetime,” Junmyeon giggles. 

They don’t know about the trouble that’s coming. They get married, and soon after that Yifan gets a promotion, but it’s not the good news they thought it was. Yifan is made to travel between Canada and Korea, doubling back and forth between the countries and staying overseas for months at a time, leaving Junmyeon in Korea. Alone. 

They are alone, but they don’t look for comfort within each other and as each year passes, they grow distant, grow mistrustful and accusing, and soon they begin to crave the time that they have apart rather than together. Everytime Yifan comes home, it’s tense and strained, and every little thing gets on each other’s nerves; it takes only a little spark to give way to a fire of shouts and accusations, a stream of tears and curses. The love they have for each other is buried beneath resentment and loneliness that the both of them are too strong-headed about to admit it out loud. 

It takes them another five years and a huge argument that neither of them know what really started it, before Junmyeon has to look at the broken remnants of a marriage that they had once started out so bravely and happily and finally admit that he’s lost at the blackjack of life and he no longer has any cards to play with. 

“We should leave,” Junmyeon says even though he doesn’t want to, and doesn’t even bother hiding the tears streaming down his cheeks, “we should leave and take our bitterness somewhere else.”

“We should,” Yifan agrees, but his eyes are wet, like he’s waiting for Junmyeon to say something that will make him stay. 

They have no children, no home, nothing to keep them together apart from _I still love you_ , but Junmyeon doesn’t know if that will make Yifan stay, if they will ever get better, and so he takes the easier choice. He takes the cowards choice and stays in their - no, _his_ \- bedroom as Yifan leaves their - _his_ \- house for the last time. The front door doesn’t slam when Yifan leaves; it shuts gently, like Yifan still cares for Junmyeon, but it doesn't matter because Yifan will never hear him cry into his pillow, will never see him again apart from one last time, will never know that Junmyeon still loves him after everything that has happened.

“I still love you,” Junmyeon says over the phone, two years later, drunk and heart hurting so, so badly. “Yi - _fan_. I - I still love you.” He hiccups, sight blurry and tilting a little, and god, his heart hurts _so badly_.

There’s a pause on the other side of the phone, then a gentle voice comes. “Junmyeon? Are you drunk? You called Yifan’s number again…” It’s Yifan’s mother. Junmyeon recognises that even through the tempest of his drunken mind.

That’s right, Junmyeon thinks, when he wakes up the next day with a pounding headache but his antics crystal clear in his mind. Yifan’s not here anymore. Not since a plane ride to Canada two days after he left Junmyeon; a fatal slip of mind during the plane’s maintenance check by a careless engineer; him, waking up to the news that the plane Yifan was on had crashed.

He rolls over into the pillow, and not for the first time, cries himself awake. Not this lifetime, then, fate says, fingers soft over Junmyeon’s shaking form, and so it has to be another lifetime. 

Time moves on, but their clock rewinds to the beginning, and they are given another time to find a permanent happiness together. 

This time, Yifan finds himself as a songwriter, a dream achieved after many long years of fighting for it and struggling to rise against the tide of hate from netizens. He learns to look for love and accept the hate with grace but not let it get to him, and he becomes a famed singer-songwriter in his own respects. He’s happy, feels like he’s risen to somewhere he wants to be, but then it’s during one fansign that his whole world suddenly turns. 

There are always fans. Hundreds, thousands of them, and he takes the time to look at each one, hold their hand and talk to them, listen to them ranting excitedly about his latest album or ask a question that sends them giggling or gush over the photoshoots that he had done recently with a famous fashion label. He had looked up when the fan in front of him moved over, not expecting anything unusual, but then again, his life had always been unpredictable. 

Large eyes, soft cheeks, a small mouth and a smile that encompassed all his features and not just his lips. A face that Yifan feels like he _knows_ , against all logic and comprehension, a face that Yifan has _loved_ , even when he’s sure he’s never seen this face before. 

“Yifan?” The fan asks, giggling, waving his hand in front of Yifan’s face, and a round of flashing lights go off. 

“What’s your name?” Yifan asks, taking the album and signing it, looking up at the fan with a smile on his face. (he doesn’t know how his face softens and his eyes becoming infinitely more affectionate when the fan laughs and smiles, face scrunched up.) 

“Junmyeon,” The fan tells him, and asks for a high-five. 

“Isn’t this better?” Yifan asks, lacing their fingers together, and Junmyeon turns into a blushing mess, words becoming stuttered in the face of Yifan’s flirty actions. 

“I really liked this album,” Junmyeon says, and their hands are still laced together. “I hope you’re taking care of yourself, Yifan!” He stands up from where he was kneeling and makes to pull away, and Yifan finds himself holding onto his hand impulsively, like he doesn’t want Junmyeon to leave. He doesn’t know where this comes from. 

“I am,” Yifan says, trying not to notice how flushed Junmyeon’s cheeks are, and how the fansite cameras are directed are their hands. “I hope to see you again, Junmyeon.”

“Me too,” Junmyeon says, smiling, and then he leaves for real this time.

Yifan shakes off the sense of loneliness he’s left with as Junmyeon leaves and goes back to chatting with another fan. 

It’s strange, he thinks later that day, when he’s in bed and scrolling through whatever social media app he’s opened. There are pictures posted from the day’s fansign already, and one of them catches his eye. It’s a shot of him looking up a fan, looking almost sad to see them go, and their hands are laced together so tightly for everyone to see, and the caption is just a simple, ‘ _He really looks at fans like this_ ’. Yifan laughs a little.

It’s only upon closer inspection that he realises the photo was taken when he was talking with Junmyeon. The large, baby blue sweater, the same wristwatch and bracelet, the same side profile he saw just a few hours ago. Without much thought, he saves the set of photos and tries not to think about what that means. He forgets to read the news that night.

Yifan remembers the name for the rest of his career. He remembers it like he remembers Junmyeon’s voice, like he remembers how their hands felt together, like he remembers how Junmyeon smiles. He holds more fansigns, but Junmyeon never returns, and Yifan can’t help but feel like he’s lost something. 

_He’s just a fan_ , Yifan scolds himself, because it’s been almost two years since he’s seen Junmyeon. _Stop thinking so much about him_! It’s too late to even check on Junmyeon, because it’s been _two years_ , and two years is plenty for everything to happen. Maybe even enough for Junmyeon to stop liking him. He bats the searing pain that tears through his chest at that thought and focuses on the lyrics scrawled in front of him again. 

Yifan lives the rest of his career peacefully. He never knows that Junmyeon had been involved in a car accident the day after leaving his first fansign. He never reads the news article that a fan of his had died in a car accident, still holding his signed album. He lives the rest of his life without knowing, and perhaps that was better than knowing, because if he had missed Junmyeon this much while assuming they could one day meet, what more would it be if he knew that Junmyeon was no longer around? 

There is no Junmyeon, and this lifetime is nothing more than a smooth sail towards the sunset. There is nothing particularly special about this time, and Yifan joins Junmyeon forty years later, and their clock is finally allowed to rewind to the start, to try one more time. 

They are best friends again in this lifetime. Have been since Junmyeon set his eyes on a shy Yifan in kindergarten and decided they were going to be best friends for life, and what Junmyeon wants, Junmyeon gets, as Yifan teases him a decade later, when they are in high school. 

“Oh, shut up,” Junmyeon says, though he can’t frown, not with the way Yifan laughs and they both have ice cream dripping down their arms but Junmyeon can’t really find it in himself to care. 

Junmyeon thinks he falls in love with Yifan that summer. They’ve always been stuck to the hip together, and wherever Junmyeon is, Yifan is beside him. They’re too young to be children but not old enough to be adults, and the world is theirs, just for that brief moment in time. 

They grow up, then, and though the hot summers always remain, the two of them change. They grow up and they fight and they grow apart but they always come back to each other, because they’ve been best friends for almost two decades now and - 

Best friends. That’s all Junmyeon will ever be to Yifan. 

It’s what he tells himself when Yifan slings his arm around Junmyeon’s waist; it’s what he writes in his diary when Yifan tells him to walk on the inside part of the pavement, away from traffic and danger; it’s what he repeats internally when Yifan, drunk out of his mind, slurs to him that he’s beautiful. 

It’s what he tells himself when Yifan looks up at him from his bed, ridiculously drunk and says unfalteringly, “I love you, Myeon,” and promptly falls asleep. Junmyeon doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. 

It’s what he tells himself because he _knows_ , Yifan does not love him. Doesn’t love him in the same way that Junmyeon does, and it’s all Junmyeon can do to not spoil their friendship. He doesn’t see the way Yifan brushes long fingers over his arm, like he wants to hold his hand; he doesn’t hear the way Yifan talks about him to their friends, all loving words and muted want and soft eyes; he doesn’t know that Yifan says _i love you_ in a different way, through his touches and actions, and so he never knows. 

Soon, they’re almost thirty and they’re supposed to have someone to settle with, supposed to have family, supposed to have someone they love, but they both don’t, and they’re sitting together on Yifan’s balcony one night when Junmyeon thinks about their life. 

“We’re almost thirty,” Yifan points out, and Junmyeon hums. 

“So we are.” 

They don’t say anything else. They don’t, because they’re both afraid, and a secret that’s been kept for longer than it should have becomes painful to say out loud, and by now, they’re long past confessions of _i love you_. Their silence has become a prison.

How can it be, Junmyeon muses, that after being best friends with Yifan for two decades, he still doesn’t know if Yifan harbours the same feelings for him. He thinks back, way, way back, to when they were fourteen and still didn’t know the word ‘love’ and all they cared about was summer. He thinks way back to when they were nineteen and Yifan had told him he knew what the word ‘love’ meant, and it was him, Junmyeon; them, together. He thinks back to when they were halfway to fifty and Yifan had smiled and told him he hoped they’d always be together. 

Too late, Junmyeon thinks. The words he wants to say are locked away under grill, key and bars and he doesn’t think he could say them even if he wanted to. 

They live like that for the rest of their life. They are together, but not in the way they want to; they say they love each other, but not in the way they want to say it; they are each others’, but never in the way they want to be, not in the eyes of the law and their family. They live a life of lies and secrets and hope because they are not meant to love each other in this lifetime.

“You know, I’ve always loved you,” Junmyeon breathes, when they are old, older, _old_ , and age has broken down the barriers of his heart. He is too old to keep secrets anymore. He is too old to let the law and society tell him who he can and cannot love. He is too old to let Yifan go again. 

“If only if we had told each other earlier,” Yifan murmurs, and Junmyeon closes his eyes. 

They’ve wasted a lifetime together, even if it was together. _You will have to try again_ , fate says, hands brittle from handling Yifan and Junmyeon, and even she is getting tired. 

Happy endings are to only be a tale for them. This time, Junmyeon is the eldest son of the Mulhae family and Yifan is from the Haengil family, and it is their luck that the two families have been sworn enemies since the creation of these two sides. 

Junmyeon has heard of Yifan’s name, growing up, and it’s always paired with curses and complaints, and he never, _never_ understands why so. He grows up around hate and loathing but never soaks it in, is simply confused with all the fighting. He doesn’t dare ask why their families are feuding, just lets it be and shies away from the public where most of the fighting happens. 

Junmyeon is used to doing his own thing, so much so that his family leaves him to wander around the city at night, walking in the gardens and streets and empty market square. He finds it more pleasing than being around the hustle and bustle and imminent fighting that plagues their city during the day. He shouldn’t have found it surprising to finally meet Yifan in the dead of the night one spring night when he’s nineteen. 

“Junmyeon-ssi,” Yifan says, his words drawing Junmyeon’s name out, and suddenly that’s all Junmyeon wants to hear for the rest of his life. 

“Yifan-ssi,” Junmyeon returns, and they regard each other in silence before turning away, an unspoken pact reached with just an exchange of gazes. 

From then on, Junmyeon meets Yifan once a week at night, and at first he had been wary, not because Yifan was from Haengil, but because he’s wary around strangers generally, and Yifan had been rather cold and aloof. It takes him from the beginnings spring until the dredges of autumn to get Yifan to open up, and that’s when everything takes a turn. 

The same night that Yifan first kisses him, Junmyeon is told he will be marrying someone from the next city over by the next summer. 

“I - I don’t even know who they are!” Junmyeon protests. “How can I -”

“You are the oldest, Junmyeon,” His _appa_ says, stern, and Junmyeon says no more, defeated again. 

Junmyeon spends the rest of the day being told about his betrothed, of their achievements and wealth and his family tells him he will be taken care of for the rest of his life. It is not what he wants. He wants someone that he can never have, he loves someone he will never be able to love properly, he’s fallen in a love that will never bear fruit.

“I heard,” Yifan says quietly a few nights later, hands around Junmyeon’s waist. “You are to marry the noble of the city across the river.” 

“I am _yours_ ,” Junmyeon says fiercely, “I will not marry - this noble, whoever they are.” 

Yifan only smiles sadly. “If only you were,” Is all he whispers, before he’s leaning down to kiss Junmyeon like it’s the last time he’ll ever do so. 

They have no chance of being together, Junmyeon knows. Next summer is still a while away, but his family is already busy preparing for him to be wed, and with each night that he spends with Yifan, the more desperate he gets. 

“Tell me you love me,” Junmyeon pleads, two weeks before he is to be sent off to a city he has never set foot in, to be wed to someone he has never seen before. “Please, Yifan.” 

“I love you,” Yifan says, the words as easy as breathing. “I love you, Junmyeon, with all of my heart.” For one last time, Junmyeon pretends their family feud doesn’t exist; for one last time, he closes his eyes and pretends he still has an eternity of tomorrows with Yifan; for one last time, he hooks his arms around Yifan’s neck and kisses him. 

He never sees Yifan again.

When Junmyeon weds, his new spouse asks about the necklace around his neck, and the ring threaded onto it. 

“It’s from family,” Junmyeon evades easily. He is not lying. 

In the years to come when he is alone, he takes the ring off it’s silver chain and slips it onto his ring finger, his wedding ring abandoned to the side. Yifan’s promise to him, under the moonlight, sealed with a kiss, wet with tears. Even after all this time, when he hasn’t seen Yifan in close to a decade, he still loves him with the same passion and intensity when they were still young and still together, and as he settles his arms on the window sill, he can’t help but wish they could be together. 

_Please_ , Junmyeon prays, _let us be together_. 

His prayer comes through for a little while in their next lifetime together. 

“I made a friend!” Yifan shouts as soon as he comes through the door, tall and lanky for eleven years old. 

“Is that so?” Yifan’s mother smiles, then bends down to kiss Yifan. “Tell me about your new friend.” 

“His name is Junmyeon and he’s in my class,” Yifan starts, “he likes puppies and when he smiles his cheeks go like this -” Yifan squishes his cheeks up with his fists, “- and he’s really, really nice.” Yifan grins with all the excitement of a child, lips stretched wide to reveal crooked teeth, and maybe this time life will be kind to them.

Yifan’s mother laughs and makes a note to tell Yifan to ask Junmyeon to come around next time. She forgets, until two months later when Yifan comes back, looking distressed. _Seonsangnim said Junmyeon got hit by a car, he’s not doing well_. She’s worried, but then Yifan comes back a week later, strange smile and tells her Junmyeon’s fine. 

She doesn’t think much about it. 

Yifan grows older, and the older he gets, the more he talks about Junmyeon. He talks about Junmyeon’s love for songs, his new plants, the puppy he recently got, how his leg is still a little bad from being hit by a car all those years ago. Junmyeon never fails to make Yifan happy, and maybe that’s all Yifan’s mother is asking for, not finding anything amiss. 

It’s not until she goes to his high school graduation with Yifan never bringing Junmyeon over despite constantly talking about him and so asks Yifan to bring Junmyeon to her that Yifan’s smile falters. 

“I - he’s not here, he’s sick today.” Yifan says, looking a little unfocused, and she frowns. 

She approaches Yifan’s teacher, asking about Junmyeon. 

“Hello, you know my son, Yifan, right? May I know where Junmyeon is? They’ve been friends for a long time and I thought it’s finally time to see him.” She laughs a little, but it isn’t echoed back to her.

The teacher looks shocked, then grief and worry settles into the lines of his face. “Junmyeon? There’s no easy way to say this but… he - he died. In the car accident years ago. Wh - what’s going on with Yifan?” 

_Died. Junmyeon’s died_. It doesn’t make sense, at first, for Yifan to be talking about Junmyeon like this, and then she realises with a thunderous jolt - Yifan’s hallucinating. Upset and heartbroken about Junmyeon’s death, he had dealt with it by simply not acknowledging the reality of Junmyeon’s passing. All these years, of hanging out with Junmyeon, of talking about doing things about him - they had all been ways of Yifan simply imagining that Junmyeon was with him. 

She takes Yifan to therapy, and it breaks her heart to see her son, her _baby_ , crying like that, finally being confronted with the years of suppressed feelings. It breaks her heart even more when she tries to wake Yifan up one morning to find that he simply wouldn’t wake up. 

Fate watches her crying over her son’s grave, right next to her husband’s, and sighs. It is long and heavy, rattling destiny to its core, and she is getting too tired to be hopeful anymore. _You must be happy soon_ , she swears, because the red thread between Yifan and Junmyeon is still as red as the first time they were together. _You will be happy together._

The next lifetime they have together comes in the form of the summer when Yifan is twenty two years old and almost done with studying. He’d come on vacation with his friends to a seaside town, all peace and calm and pretty, and Yifan loves it. 

He loves it even more when he meets a boy working at one of the cafes lining the beach. His name is Junmyeon, and he’s twenty one and his specialty is the hazelnut latte, which Yifan orders every time. It doesn’t take him long to fall for Junmyeon, who is small and pretty and _loud_ , and it’s undoubtedly Yifan best summer. 

They spend the days walking the streets of the small town, Junmyeon showing him the secrets around his hometown. They spend the evenings strolling in the wet sand and inky waters, guided by the warm throw of lights from the buildings by the beach. They spend the nights sitting on the benches outside the cafe and exchanging sweet kisses, giggling about nothing in particular. 

Junmyeon is easily the best thing he’s ever had in his life, and he doesn’t want to let go, which is why he exchanges numbers with Junmyeon and tells him they have to stay in contact. Junmyeon’s smile is blinding and bright and god, Yifan is so in love, and presses a kiss to his mouth as way of promise. 

Nothing goes well after that. Yifan’s phone is stolen, and with it, all contact of Junmyeon. He spends the first term back trying desperately to get in contact with Junmyeon again, through his friends and through some of the friends he’s made in town, but all his efforts are futile. 

“Where are you, Junmyeon,” Yifan whispers into the night, when it’s been almost a year and he still hasn’t found Junmyeon. He goes back down to the town to find Junmyeon, but no one knows where he is and the cafe where Junmyeon used to work at has a new owner who knows no one of the name Junmyeon. 

Yifan leaves again, this time with a broken heart and a broken promise. 

He won’t ever know that Junmyeon had moved to the city he lived in in an effort to find him as well. He won’t even know that just two streets away from where he lived, Junmyeon was making a living and finding a job. He won’t ever know that, because he moves away from Seoul, back to China, heartbroken and hopeless. 

They won’t ever know that they had come so close to finding their happy ending, and they are young but they are old, and their souls are being weighed down from the untied endings of their past. _Another time. Please let it be this time._

And then, this lifetime, the one we know. The one that goes like them auditioning for a company and getting in and spending all their hours surviving the elimination process that the public doesn’t see until there are twelve of them standing at the end, exhausted even before they’ve started. 

“We’re debuting,” Junmyeon says, words slurred by laughter or tears, they can’t tell, and then the twelve of them are - family. The learn to sing well and dance better and are told of their name and concept and that they will be split up. It’s not like they have much say in anything, so they take what they can get and do their best with it. 

Yifan finds Junmyeon crying in the bathroom at two in the morning a month before they’re slated to debut. “I’m scared, hyung,” Junmyeon hiccups, “you - the kids - everyone - what if we’re not enough?” He looks at Yifan like he thinks Yifan can ease all of his pain and Yifan doesn’t even stop to think about his actions, just pulls Junmyeon close and hopes _he_ is enough. 

“We will have to be,” Yifan says, and Junmyeon hugs him back, hands small and clutching as fistfuls of the back of his shirt. “If we’re together we’re enough.” 

They are enough, because they are love. The first time they promote together is also the first time Junmyeon has enough courage to go on his tip-toes and press a kiss to Yifan’s mouth, and they are happy. Incredibly happy. It’s like nothing can come in between them, because if they’re together, they’re perfect. 

Still, Junmyeon isn’t blind to the way Yifan grimaces as he practices, how he’s gone for long periods of times even when he doesn’t want to, how Yifan looks more and more distant with each week that passes. The lawsuit comes a month later,

_So was I not enough for you, then_ , Junmyeon laughs bitterly, about a year or two later and watching Yifan pack his things. 

_You know it’s not about you_ , Yifan says, tired, and he wants to do nothing more than take Junmyeon in his arms again, like nothing’s wrong. _It was never about you, Myeon_. 

_I know,_ Junmyeon says, and his voice is breaking. _I know, Fan, I know_. 

“I’ll always love you,” Yifan says, inking it like a promise over Junmyeon’s collarbone and shoulder. “No matter what happens, I’ll always love you.” 

“I love you too,” Junmyeon chokes out, and _no_ , Yifan can’t really be leaving, but then all he’s left with is the scar of one less person of what’s supposed to be twelve, and then everything starts falling apart. 

Junmyeon’s the leader. He has to be strong. He has to show that they can still continue. He has to prove to the public that they’re more than enough, needs to be a pillar for the others, who are devastated and can’t bring themselves to face the tatters of a group that had debuted with so much hope. He smiles and laughs and encourages and lies so often that he can’t tear Suho away from Junmyeon, and he knows he’s bound to break soon. 

Their group was formed for two people, two sets of shoulders to bear the brunt, and now the scales have tipped, and Junmyeon thinks his arms will give way soon, because his shoulders were never that broad anyway. For a while, nothing seems like it’ll be okay, if it’ll return to normal, and Junmyeon can’t help but wonder if he can start everything again, set the clock to 2012 and start over. 

“ _I love you_ ,” Yifan says over the phone, and Junmyeon breathes in. Tries not to cry.

“It’s been so hard,” Junmyeon admits shakily, “I miss you so much, Fan, I really do.” 

Yifan is quiet over the phone, and when he talks there’s a wobble to his voice that seems like he’s crying too. “ _I know, Myeon. I know. I’m so sorry, I wish… I hope you’re okay_.” 

They still love each other, but they can’t. Not in this world, not like this. Junmyeon continues to carry the name of his group on his back, picking up what he can and also what he cannot, always stretching too far to the point of bursting. The others, as they grow older, lighten and lessen his burden where they can, and perhaps, they really will be okay one day.

(sometimes, he looks at their recent photos and frowns; sometimes, he counts the members and looks around confusedly; sometimes, he buys things and counts twelve, not nine. sometimes, he forgets and the wounds open up all again and he has to remember that now they are nine, as the public sees them. time still hasn’t made him forget that part of life he so dearly treasures, and the pain is as fresh as the first time he had looked at them and wondered who would be the next to leave.) 

“Do you think we would have been happy?” Junmyeon whispers over the phone, when years have passed and their lives no longer collide. 

“ _We are still happy_ ,” Yifan points out, and for a few moments, Junmyeon closes his eyes and imagines Yifan was by his side. 

“Not in the way we want to be,” Junmyeon says evenly, struggling not to let his emotions get the best of him, “you know that.”

There’s a pause on Yifan’s end, like he’s rustling about and trying to get comfortable. “ _We have to grab at our happiness, don’t we_?” Yifan asks, laughing a little dryly, and Junmyeon’s heart still pounds after all this time. “ _No matter what happens, I will always love you, Myeon_.” 

“So will I,” Junmyeon murmurs, because their love cannot be shouted from the rooftops, cannot be fireworks in a festival, cannot be banners and champagne and invitations and altars. They are not meant for that right now. “I will always love you, Fan.” 

Their love is candle light, flickering but steady; their love is a breeze on a hot summer’s day, not that noticeable but welcomed, regardless; their love is hushed whispers and under the covers, in shadowy corners and secret signs. It tears Yifan apart, to see Junmyeon hurting so, and if he could, he’d love Junmyeon out in the open, but they can’t. 

They can’t, they know that, fate knows that too, and she is tired. She is not alive, nor is she dead, but her hands bear the weight of a lifetime of their broken lifetimes and unfulfilled love, and she cannot bear to see them unhappy again. 

_One last chance_ , she says, watching Yifan and Junmyeon love each other a sea apart and never really truly together. _One more time, before they are no more_. They are still meant to be.

**Author's Note:**

> okay LISTEN cry and rant at me i want to know what you thought about this!! and if you want a specific au for the sequel to this fic, tell me in the comments! the sequel will be the lifetime where they do have a happy ending together, so if your heart is broken, fear not, so is mine, im back to writing fluff because this is not good for my soft heart
> 
> also, i realise this is very heavy angst and there is a particular point i just wanna clear up. i write about yifan hallucinating that junmyeon is alive and well for one lifetime, and i realise fully that this may not be a faithful representation of people who do experience hallucinations and i apologise if i portrayed this aspect incorrectly. 
> 
> other than that i hope everyone waits patiently for the sequel! if there is anything you think i need to add to the tags/any aspect you wish to discuss just drop a comment!!


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